The Man Who Was On Fire
by ThisIsTrueImmortality
Summary: "My muse is Fire. That sounds poetic, to be sure, but it's really quite terrible once you think about it." Cinna, the new District 12 stylist, begins to realize that he is caught up in the flames of inspiration as surely as a tribute is in the Games.


**Author's note: This is my second Hunger Games piece, so please be kind. :) I think it turned out pretty well, considering it took me about an hour and a half to write. **

**Cinna has always been one of the most fascinating characters to me in THG, so it was a pleasure to try and get inside his head. It's not such a pretty place, after all. **

**Song: .com/watch?v=DXRxaItZGUM Illuminated by Hurts. Quite Cinna-ly and angsty, in my opinion. **

**Enjoy!**

The Man Who Was On Fire: A Hunger Games Oneshot

My muse is Fire.

That sounds poetic, to be sure, but it's really quite terrible once you think about it. Fire is so attractive from a distance, but if you follow through with your vague thoughts of approaching it, you're most likely going to fall in. I realize that I bypassed the approach and tipped myself into the flames approximately twenty hours ago.

I stare at the tiny little burner on my desk, watching the blue energy dance up and down, side to side, twisting, turning. I don't think blue is right; it's just not powerful enough. Blue is cool, soothing, mysterious. I need hot, burning, alluring. What about the classical fire colors? I pull over the other device, the one that shoots out spurts of orange and yellow flames, and turn it on.

Portia comes in an hour later and stands at the doorway. I know she's watching me watch the flames. By now I've started sketching out the patterns the tiny fires make in the air. "I'm going to bed," Portia says. "I just thought I'd let you know that it's past one."

"I know," I say, pointing to the watch on my wrist.

Waiting a moment, Portia asks the inevitable question. "You're staying up, then?"

"Until the energy runs out."

There isn't any more commentary from my partner. She knows it's useless to use common sense on me when I'm united with the muse. "See you tomorrow," Portia says, and closes the door behind her. I turn up the flames.

It's coalescing in my mind: a collection of lights and shadows that slowly, ever so slowly, takes shape. My pen can't scratch out the designs fast enough. Several times I rip a sketch from the desk, tearing it in half for good measure. The muse is merciless to inadequacy.

It's three o'clock before I blink my eyes. I shake my head, refusing to yawn, and grind the point of my pen into the paper, the fury of creation burning inside me. It's _there_, it's right there in front of me. I have to uncover it before it's gone forever. I turn up the little flames and stare at them pensively for a moment, holding the image of the design in my mind.

The pen makes irritating noises as it runs along the paper, but I ignore that triviality. Fire is what I need, and it has to be the kind that you can see for miles. Significant, brilliant, eye-catching fire. My models must be the most glorious beings ever to strike the Capitol.

I take one break at four o'clock. I wonder if I should shut off the flames for a while but decide against it. I can still watch them while I drink my water and review my sketches.

Naturally, this isn't the first time I've worked on this creation; the idea of fire was originally Portia's, one that came to her several months ago. That was when we had asked to design for District 12, when it was still a political move for us. It had come to her one night, in a dream, when she had fallen asleep at her work desk.

I had stumbled into her work room at the sound of her screams, my own sleep-befuddled brain reeling. I had regained my senses as I comforted her while she shook and gasped in her straight-backed chair. She told me that she had dreamed of our tributes. I wondered aloud why that was so bad, and she answered that they had been burning alive.

Burning alive. As I am, now.

After that episode, Portia always made sure she went to bed before she could fall asleep at her work. I, however, took the opposite approach; I wanted to have these vivid dreams of fire. There was once a man named Dali, I think, and he always waited until he nearly fell asleep to receive inspiration. I resolved to try Dali's way of reaching the muse. I would stay up at work until I drifted off into dreams only to jerk back awake when inspiration hit.

Portia was angry the first time she came back to work to find me slumped over my desk. I had assured her that I hadn't had any nighmares, that I was just excited to finally have a district for which to design.

I was lying.

The sketches I made after that first nightmare were for my eyes alone. If I showed them to Portia I knew she would realize where I had gotten them. They were of children with fiery hair and eyes, screaming in pain as they clawed at one another till they bled. In my first sketch there were four of them, and in the drawing after that, two of the children were impaling the other couple on spears of fire.

It was revolting, sickening, and realistic. This was the reality of the Hunger Games in finite detail. I began to wait up later and later, making sure I closed the doors securely so no one would hear my own cries of agony as I watched the children burn. And in the morning when Portia returned, we would put our heads together and stoke the flames.

This went on until, at last, one night I couldn't take any more. By then I had an entire portfolio full of burning children. They were my secret, like the secrets I knew every Gamemaker must have hidden away in his head. Horrors that I couldn't share with anyone, not Portia, not the Avox that tends my studio. Not even, to a certain extent, myself; I would sketch the nightmares quickly and then shut the evidence up in the portfolio.

But that last night, my burning children drove me over the edge. I woke up with tears running down my face and blinding my eyes. I had jumped from my desk and run, sobbing, into the hallway leading to the front of the office building. Without realizing what I was doing, I hurtled through a sliding-glass door and onto the balcony that overlooked all of the Capitol. There, on the balcony, bleeding and covered in shards of glass, I had fallen to my knees in despair at what I had seen in my dreams.

The security guard had found me the next day and had notified a panicked Portia. The next two weeks had been a round of interrogations from doctors and therapists and who knows who else. My superiors dismissed the incident as a prime example of "the artsy type" and their tendency to breakdown. My partner had asked me over and over again what had happened, but I could never explain it to her.

The doctors eventually called it a psychotic attack. I called it waking up.

Until then, all the tributes had ever been to me were pieces of meat I could dress up and make beautiful. That was the safest way for stylists to look at their clients. The farther away we stood from the flames, the better it was for our sanity. After my dreams, there was no safe distance anymore. If my tributes burned, I burned with them.

And so that's why, after a break of five minutes, I sit back down at my desk and begin to sketch again. I have no more need for nightmares; they have done their job, so they've left. I adjust the little flames and watch them dance. I rip sketch after sketch after sketch off my work surface.

Hitting my desk with my palm, I growl in frustration. What is missing from this design? There's only two weeks left till the Games. How am I going to save my tributes? I have the fire; Portia and I hit upon the right formula just last week. I have the energy: it's dancing on my desk. What do I need to feed the muse?

One thing Cinna never does is accept defeat. I, Cinna the stylist, am as fearsome in my own field as a victor on his Cornucopia. I am relentless, hammering out my designs until they bleed and beg for mercy. And then I cut them into pieces and stitch them into different patterns, shapes that look nothing like the originals. I do this and more until I stand, triumphant, with the final product in my hands, ready to be given to my tribute.

This muse burns on inside me for ten days. Portia comes into the workroom every morning with her new sketches and we compare ideas. Neither of us is satisfied with our designs. Something is still missing, and our time is running out. We both realize how new we are to the world of the Hunger Games, but we know that we can surpass every veteran stylist in the Capitol if we can discover what the muse is showing us. We both end up spending every night for a week hunched over our desks, staring at flames.

Three days to the Games, and the flame burns out. I lie on the floor of the studio and let the humiliation, the anger, the resentment come. I am out of fuel. The muse can't survive without my soul to feed upon, and today my body is hollow. I am the conquered tribute lying on the bare earth, anticipating the death-blow.

I have given up. My tributes will die like every other District 12 tribute. They might even die in the ways I have dreamed. I put my hands over my eyes. I can't handle the images right now. They come regardless: the children engulfed in flame, biting each other, slashing one another with knives, screaming, screaming-

"Cinna?"

Portia peers down at me, her face concerned. I sit up and give her the best smile I can manage at the moment. "Have I missed breakfast again?"

"Yes, but that's not why I came to find you." Portia holds out a hand trembling with excitement. In her hand she holds a slim PortaTele.

I take the viewing device and turn it on. "What's this for?"

"It's our children. They've just released the tribute profiles."

I feel a smoldering in my chest as I thumb over the file reading 'District 12 Profiles.' The first photo I come across is of a boy with long blonde hair and kind blue eyes. The caption reads: PEETA MELLARK. "There he is," Portia says, a smile in her face. "There's my boy. Handsome, isn't he?"

"He's got a very pleasing face," I say, but internally I find Peeta's appearance too mild for the muse. He's more suited to the blue flames, not the orange and red that keep appearing on my sketches.

With some misgivings, I roll over to the next photo. That's another one of Peeta, a screenshot taken from the Reapings. I realize that I missed those, too, and feel ashamed. The Reapings are a valuable first look that most stylists should have. Oh, well. There's nothing I can do about that now, except watch them on replay. I note the look of dread on Peeta's face and find it odd; most tributes aren't looking forward to the Games, but most of them aren't so horrified.

The next photo I scroll over takes my breath away.

There she is: my muse. Her defiant gray eyes stare up at me, licking their lashes with flame. Her long dark hair is plaited into one braid and pulled in front of her shoulder. Her olive skin glows with life suppressed. She is sullen, she is bitter, she is beautiful. The name at the bottom of the picture: KATNISS EVERDEEN.

"_That's_ my tribute?" I ask Portia, my voice awed.

"Definitely," Portia answers, and I'm surprised by her tone. She sounds almost disappointed. I turn around to look at her. "I don't know," she says, "I was just hoping she might be...a little more likeable."

"I love her," I say, and mean it.

Katniss Everdeen is just what I need to make the flames roar to life. Peeta Mellark will be caught up in the fire, too, and if I play my cards right, so will all of Panem. I hand Portia the PortaTele and stand up. "Let's get back to work," I say, grabbing my pen from off the floor. "We don't have much time."

This design will be fabulous. It will outshine every costume the other stylists could hope to create. It will rage through the ranks of tributes and leave a scorch mark in its wake. And at the head of this column of flames will be my muse, my tribute: Katniss Everdeen.

As my pen lights up the page, I am one with the flames. I am The Man Who Is on Fire.


End file.
